Leadership Nudge™ – RED WORK BLUE WORK
Our Leadership Nudge™ this week is about two different kinds of work. We call them Red work and Blue work.
Red work is work that is fundamentally about reducing variability. Red work is the kind of work we are very familiar with. It is a result of the industrial revolution. Red work is about doing. It is about avoiding errors. It is about execution. When we say, “We come to work to do our jobs,” that is a legacy of this long history of red work.
Blue work is fundamentally about embracing variability. Blue work is thinking work, not just doing. Blue work is about achieving excellence, not just avoiding errors. Blue work is about decision making, not just executing our tasks.
We think about our work like this, our work is either red work or blue work, and we alternate between the two. Here’s the problem. Bots, algorithms, and robots are increasingly eating away at the red work. If you are doing a lot of red work, your job is at risk and it is going to go away.
Our Leadership Nudge to you this week is this:
Think about the work you are doing and create more blue work in the work.
Let us know what how it goes!
Enroll for the Leadership Nudge™ – www.davidmarquet.com
